The Christmas Truce

by Lynne | Dec 5, 2017 | Did You Know?, Historical Background, Holidays and History

It’s become a tradition for me to send this story out every Christmas.  I hope you enjoy.

When it started, World War I was predicted to last only a few weeks.  (The same was true of the Civil War, by the way.) Instead, by December of 1914, WWI had already claimed nearly a million lives. In fact, over fifteen million died in a war that dragged on for four miserable years.

But a remarkable thing happened on December 24, 1914.  The front fell silent except for the singing of Silent Night.  A truce!  There are many examples of truces during wars, but none as famous as this one.  The Christmas Truce of 1914.

In the Ypres region of Belgium on Christmas Eve, guns stopped, leaving a deathly silence across the fields.  Then suddenly the British watched in astonishment as Germans began to set tiny trees along their trench lines.  Soon a familiar tune with unfamiliar words carried across No Man’s Land, the battered and desolate space between the enemies.  Silent Night.  Stille Nacht.

Soon the British were singing along with the Germans.  Soldiers on both sides crawled out of their trenches to meet in the middle and greet their enemy.  They exchanged cigarettes and souvenirs.  Perhaps a drink or two.  And they collected their dead and wounded, carrying them back to their respective sides.

Peace for the day.  Only one day because the next day they were back killing each other.  Is there something wrong with this picture?

The story of the Christmas Truce came to my attention after reading the non-fiction, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild, an amazing story of WWI.  I highly recommend. http://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/B008PIC0T8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356046840&sr=1-1&keywords=to+end+all+wars

I’ll leave you with this thought.   If Christmas can bring together mortal enemies for a day, why not for a week, a month, a year or longer?  Or forever?

I hope you click on the youtubes below.  They will make you sad and happy but most of all hopeful.  Wishing you a happy holiday and a prosperous and healthy New Year.

Belleau Wood: Christmas Truce by Garth Brooks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy9lg0aAhlE

Christmas Truce 1914, Music with captions to tell the story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsCpLMPI7IY

Behind the Christmas Story: The Christmas Truce http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLcvjA8NDk

Christmas Truce of 1914. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05E_ohaQGk

Not So Pure Puritans

by Lynne | Nov 21, 2017 | Did You Know?, Historical Background, Holidays and History

I found this article particularly interesting with the holidays coming and its ties to my research into my mystery about the Salem Witch Trials, Pure Lies.  Sexual obsession is not a concept usually associated with Puritans, but this sheds light on a grim and repressed period of time in American history.

“America’s Thanksgiving holiday goes back at least 388 years to the year following the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims were among a number of sects called Puritans, and like many Puritan sects, the Pilgrims came to America essentially because they thought 17th Century England much too bawdy.(1) That England of the time was bawdy — a raucous bawdiness in full bloom — there’s no doubt. But the idea that the Puritans (and Pilgrims) suffered from religious persecution in England is probably a myth. What they suffered from was unease (and maybe too much temptation) at the general licentiousness of English life.

So various Puritan colonies were established in America, colonies with dictatorial repression of daily life, mostly of sexual behavior. It’s an American cultural heritage that few Americans ever talk about, except maybe when they read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a novel about the miseries of an adulterous couple in a Puritan community. Our custom is for three or four generations of family to sit down at a Thanksgiving dinner with hardly a memory that what the Pilgrims and other Puritans were all about was sexual obsession.

A set of ideas about human sexual behavior so strong that the ideas result in strict rules that govern a community by threat of physical punishment easily morphs from philosophy into obsession — and that’s exactly what happened once the Puritans came into control of laws in their colonies in the New World.

The background of the Puritan obsession with sex is a fascinating thread in the history of Western culture. The obsession apparently originated in a close literal reading of the Bible, a fervent belief that the main causes of the suffering of all mankind were 1) the disobedience of Adam and Eve in seeking knowledge of sex, 2) the shame of their nakedness, and 3) their sexual desire for each other. Taking these causes as axioms for social doctrine about sexual behavior led the literalists (fundamentalists) easily into social tyranny. The sexual act itself became the “original sin” — an irony, since the sexual act was the only means available to produce progeny to replace those who died.

The old New England children’s rhyme tells it all: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”

These ideas certainly predated the Puritans, since hatred of women as sexual saboteurs, revulsion at the sex act, and derision of marriage are on nearly every page of the writings of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The great Protestant reformers Luther, Calvin and Knox did little to change these attitudes about sexual behavior, and more or less enforced them. The classical Christian view was that any act of sexual love, in or out of marriage, was a betrayal of God. By the time the Puritans arrived, the classical view had been modified: sexuality in marriage was acceptable, but sexuality of any kind outside marriage was a sin and a crime, punishable with fines, whipping, branding, banishment, and even death.

And the origins? The fervor against sexuality evidently originated in ancient Hebrew law, the ancient fear that man was weakened by sexual intercourse, ancient references to the sex act as the “little death” and a form of castration. In their morning prayers, Orthodox Jews still proclaim, “I thank Thee, Lord, for not having created me a woman.”

Sexuality was inherently evil, the sex act an abomination and a sin, women morally inferior and sources of temptation. If the sex act was needed to produce a new generation, let it be accomplished without lust. So much for the mechanics of Darwinian sexual selection. From a biological standpoint, it’s a wonder the Western world did not go extinct before the Renaissance. But it’s no wonder at all that countless women (and many men) were driven into madness by the incompatibility between the social tyranny of their Judeo-Christian cultural heritage and their evolved biology.

At the Thanksgiving table we think of turkey, children, and grandparents. Let it be so. We need the comforts, especially in our current time. But we should also be thankful that we’ve come out of the darkness of the past, the darkness of ignorance and social tyranny. That too is something that needs the giving of thanks.

Note (1). Whatever “persecution” the Pilgrims suffered in Europe was political rather than religious. The Pilgrims were Puritan separatists. The sect of Puritans who came to be known as Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the Anglican Church. Other Puritan sects did not demand separation. It was the vocal opposition of Pilgrim leaders to the Anglican Church and the King of England that caused their problems with government. The Pilgrims left England for Holland, were unhappy in Holland, and eventually achieved financing by English investors and migrated to America.”

Written by Dan Agin and posted 3/18/2010, updated 11/17/2011.  Reprinted from the Huffington Post.